Daryl Dobbins was a bright, enterprising young man. A boy preacher in the First Church of the Fire Baptized. But one fateful day he succumbed to temptation and read a library book entitled The God Delusion. Then he read another book entitled god is not Great.
After that double whammy his faith lay in a heap of rubble. He now knew the afterlife was a lie, concocted by greedy, power-hungry churchmen to keep the teaming masses obsequious and barefoot.
Since this life is all there is, he had to make the most of his four-score and ten. Live life to the fullest. And to do that, he needed to move up the ladder.
His ambition was to graduate valedictorian, which would, in turn, ensure him a full scholarship to the Ivy League school of his choice. He then needed to graduate first in his class at law school. After that he could pretty much write his own ticket.
To get the most out of life, you had to have a plan. However, certain obstacles lay in the way of his dream–starting with Billy-Bob Nelson. For Billy-Bob was well on the way to being the high school valedictorian.
So Daryl offered to take Billy-Bob fishing on a secluded little lake nearby. Did I mention that Billy-Bob was a lousy swimmer?
Their rowboat “accidentally” capsized, and despite Daryl’s very best efforts to resuscitate his dear friend, it was curtains for Billy-Bob. Daryl offered a tearful eulogy at the funeral.
Daryl was an excellent student at Harvard law school, but competition was fierce. So he cultivated the reputation of an ace hacker. Not that he was a hacker, much less an ace hacker, but he did an excellent impersonation of an ace hacker. When time for finals rolled around, Daryl was the go-to guy (for a price) to obtain the test key.
Only there was this little catch. He generated the test key by flipping a coin for each answer.
His fellow students flunked the exam, but they couldn’t very well turn him in without turning themselves in.
After landing a top job at a Fortune 500 company, Daryl discovered the perfect wife. Well, almost. There was one small snag. She was married.
But, quite unexpected, she became available a few weeks later on the heels a transaction involving a callgirl, a hotel room, her husband, and a hidden camera.
You just had to know how to get the most out of life.
Let's say that Daryl Dobbins lives a long life beyond his "four-score and ten" and never got caught doing those things that Christians would consider evil. What can an atheist say to convince Daryl that he did anything truly and objectively evil? Especially if part of what he considered "living life to the max" meant taking risks that got his adrenaline running. Who is anyone to tell Daryl that some risks aren't worth it? If killing simulated people in video games is "fun", why not kill real humans for sport? If atheism were true, then real human beings are equally non-valuable intrinsically (or extrinsically) as simulated ones.
ReplyDeleteMost of you atheists can't live this way because you're made in God's image with the work of God's law written in your consciences. You atheists who can live this way have seared consciences. For the sake of your soul, sanity, reason and lasting joy, bow your knee to God and believe on His Son.
Daryl was obviously a sociopath, like roughly 5% of the general population (though the vast majority of sociopaths enever kill). I commend a reading of Martha Stout's The Sociopath Next Door for those interested in this kind of behavior.
ReplyDeleteWhat can an atheist say to convince Daryl that he did anything truly and objectively evil? Well, most of us (i.e. the non-sociopaths) would tell him that what he did was nasty. But the key is that we would be making our own moral judgment based on our evolved instincts and learned moral judgments. Most of us would readily acknowledge that some people have greater moral judgment and will be more reliable judges of right and wrong. Clearly, some individuals and some texts may possess important moral wisdom: Stephen Law, Humanism: A Very Short Introduction (2011, Oxford University Press) at p. 79.
What you Bibleists fail to realize is that even if you decide to follow the moral precepts of some holy book or priest, you are still making your own judgments. Each individual has inevitably to rely on their own individual moral compass - their own sense of right and wrong - in weighing up to whom they should listen and whether to accept the moral advice they are given: Law (ibid, p. 79).
I don't not profess to have any expertise in Calvinism but Maharashi Rauser wrote on his blog today that: Not only did God predispose human persons to behave in certain ways, but he is the primary cause of their acting the way they do. based on this view, Daryl should either blame lordy for his nasty predispositions or, better yet, just sincerely repent on his deathbed and receive a metaphysical "get out of jail free" card.
Ah yes. Daryl got the most out of life according to what he considered a “full life” entailed. Of course, I would disagree with him and I suppose TAM disagrees as well. Of course, I would disagree with TAM. And the Egyptian protesters would disagree with all of us. Perhaps Adolf Hitler had another concept of a “full life”. As many people as there are in this world, each of us likely has a somewhat different vision of a “full life”.
ReplyDeleteThus TAM rightly pointed out that it’s all subjective, and I would agree that where our idea of “life” is constrained to the existential world it is subjective. However, I disagree that this is where life objectively originates. While Christians yet undergoing sanctification practice subjective temporal living (for good or ill), we possess that which is not subjectively acquired: eternal life (certainly for good). Eternal life is objectively given in all of its fullness.
TAM said...
ReplyDeleteDaryl was obviously a sociopath, like roughly 5% of the general population (though the vast majority of sociopaths enever kill).
I'm not a linguist who can properly do word etymologies. But he's an attempt using webster.com. The word "sociopath" (I'm guessing) comes from two root words. The first is from the Latin word "socius" meaning "companion". Hence the word "society". The "path" of "socioPATH" has its origins from Greek word "paschein" which means "suffering, experience, emotion,...to experience, suffer". Hence the word "pathology" which means:
"1 : the study of the essential nature of diseases and especially of the structural and functional changes produced by them
2: something abnormal."
On the various atheistic worldviews, how could anyone be necessarily obligated to society? Since there would be no transcendant personal Obligator who universally binds all human beings to a set of moral standards. If atheism were true, all agreed upon moral standards would only be conventional. But why must Daryl conform to convention? Daryl could easily call the other (alleged) 95% of people who are different as "egopaths". That is, disfunctional when it comes to asserting one's ego. Why should he accept Martha Stout's or any psychiatric association's definition of what is "healthy" and what is "sickly"? In fact, terms like "healthy" and "sickly" presuppose a "telos" (design, or purpose). Under atheism, there is no transcendant design by which to compare what is functioning properly and what is malfunctioning. In fact, if atheistic macro-evolution were true, all forms of cancer are part of the natural evolutionary process.
There would be nothing inherently good or bad about cancer. In the material world things "just are", and things "just happen" with no purpose or binding evaluation. Nothing would be "abnormal"
or "unnatural" because EVERYTHING would be normal and natural (literally).
TAM said...
But the key is that we would be making our own moral judgment based on our evolved instincts and learned moral judgments.
Why should Daryl go along with his instincts or learned moral judgements? He can conclude that he has evolved enough consciousness to realise that he has genetically inherited certain traits and instincts. With that knowledge, he's free to go contrary to them. To do so would, in fact, be an affirmation of his evolved state and personal freedom from any kind of herd instinct.
TAM said...
ReplyDeleteMost of us would readily acknowledge that some people have greater moral judgment and will be more reliable judges of right and wrong.
Echoing C.S. Lewis, how can you judge what is more (or less) "reliable" if you don't have an ultimate standard?
TAM said...
Each individual has inevitably to rely on their own individual moral compass - their own sense of right and wrong - in weighing up to whom they should listen and whether to accept the moral advice they are given: Law (ibid, p. 79).
But if Christianity is true, then the work of the law is written on human hearts so that everyone has some sense of the Law of God in their hearts. The moral compass would then be something created in man, and though it doesn't always point perfectly north (because of our sinful condition), there nevertheless is an actual moral "north" (i.e. God). So, your statement fails as an internal critique of Christianity (because of a strawman representation of it).
TAM said...
Not only did God predispose human persons to behave in certain ways...
The human predisposition to sin is an inherited result of the Fall of humanity through Adam and Eve.
TAM said...
...but he is the primary cause of their acting the way they do.
Calvinism doesn't require a dogmatic stance on which view of causality accounts for how God ensures that what He has ordained and decreed will come to pass. Some Calvinists appeal to theistic semi-compatibilism; others to occasionalism or similarly to a continous creation theory; others to middle knowledge; others appeal to the implications of the B-theory of time.
Are there difficulties with the Christian position? Sure. We don't deny that there are mysteries in Christian theology and the Christian worldview. But the various atheistic positions seem (at least to me) to be more problematic. The Christian worldview does a much better job in allowing for and accounting for the preconditions of intelligibility and human experience
. Even if taken as merely a hypothesis, Christianity has greater explanatory power and explanatory scope.
According to one webpage, the following is excerpted from "A Critique of Ethical Relativism" by Louis Pojman. He describes it as "paraphrase of a tape-recorded conversation between Ted Bundy and one of his victims in which Bundy justifies his murder."
ReplyDeleteEven if this isn't a legitimate paraphrase, the reasoning makes sense if atheism were taken as true.
"Then I learned that all moral judgments are "value judgments," that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either "right" or "wrong." I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured out for myself - what apparently the Chief Justice couldn't figure out for himself"”that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any "reason" to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring "” the strength of character "” to throw off its shackles. ... I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable value judgment" that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these "others"? Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog's life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as "moral" or "good" and others as "immoral" or "bad"? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me"”after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self."